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“What do you think about the Israeli / AUC controversy?” |
Engineering students caught between work and student activities
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| Gehad Elmor /CARAVAN STAF WORKING HARD: (L)Sobhy, El Esseily, Ouda, Haggag and Emad are working on a graduation project that provides an assistance device for cars’ drivers. |
Relaxing and enjoying coffee during their freshman year, unsuspecting engineering students don’t realize that four years later, the labs of the Falaki building will become their second home and they too will look like the current crop of sleep-deprived engineering zombies.
Don’t say we didn’t tell you so.
The journey of six electronics-engineering students—-Marianne Sobhy,
Mohamed El Beltagy, Mohamed El Esseily, Ramy Emad, Eman Ouda and Shady
Haggag—-has been a tough one. But it’s now coming to an end
as they work on their final project, a “car assistance device,”
with a Global Positioning System (GPS) that allows the driver to locate
the nearest medical center or police station in cases of emergency.
In addition, if the car is stolen, the GPS device in the car will send
a message to the owner’s mobile phone telling him the location of
his car. That message is updated every five minutes, allowing the owner
to track the car.
The device will also be connected with police systems, informing them
that there is a car that is stolen, added El Esseily.
As the semester comes to an end, the group is forced to meet for longer
hours and to leave the university late at night, Sobhy said.
“We are spending a lot of time in the university lab, although we
are still working on the first part of our thesis,” said El Beltagy,
explaining that the first part of any graduation project is focused on
research. The second part consists of practical implementation and needs
even more work, he said.
Yasmine Abu Samra, a construction engineering (CENG) graduate, said that
the second part of her graduation project had her group spending more
than six hours a day in the Falaki labs during the final months of the
semester.
Although many graduating seniors find space in the university labs to
work overnight, Abu Samra’s group resorted to renting an off-campus
apartment near City Stars Mall in Heliopolis to work on their project.
“We designed our own lab because the school’s labs were always
swamped with other groups of students working on their projects,”
said Abu Samra, whose group spent many nights in the rented apartment.
On the other hand, Tamer Darwish, a graduating senior in mechanical engineering
(MENG), said that the workload is similar during both semesters. Darwish
is one of seven people working on creating an automatic multi-story parking
garage.
“You can drive into your garage, leave your car on a plate and take
your keys. The car then moves into the elevator which then takes it to
the designated floor,” he said, adding that other mechanisms see
that the car is parked in the appropriate space, he explained.
Last semester, during the feasibility study period, the group worked for
10-12 hours daily, often spending nights at the university. Though most
of the their time is spent doing research on the computer or writing lab
reports, many engineering students still find the time to be involved
in the larger AUC community.
“Time management is the key to balancing our graduation project
and other classes and on-campus activities,” said El Esseily, who
explained that all six members of his group actively participate in extracurricular
activities, both as presidents or committee heads of student-run clubs.
El Beltagy is the president of the Entrepreneurs Society (ES), while Haggag
and El Esseily are committee heads for ES fundraising and internal public
relations respectively. As for the other members, Emad is the president
of the International Conference on Global Economy (ICGE), Ouda is its
fundraising committee head and Sobhy is a member of its publications committee.
All six members of the group are due to graduate in the upcoming spring
semester after completing the practical part of their project.
